Relational Sociology, Theoretical Inhumanism, and the Problem of the Nonhuman

Abstract

The development of relational sociology is a positive step forward for sociological theory through its emphasis on the key category of the relation and its refusal to engage in individualistic reductionism, central conflationism, or substantialist inflationism (Archer 1995, 2000, Crossley 2011, Donati 2011). Despite the move toward the concept of relation, relational sociology maintains a reactionary humanist social ontology acting as though social relations are limited to the relations that are obtained between humans and denying the existence of those relations that are obtained between humans and nonhumans such as animals, plants, and things. As a result, relational sociology brings us no closer to understanding what has been called the “missing masses” of social scientific explanation (Latour 1992). Relational sociology does nothing to advance the sociologist’s ability to study these “missing masses” and, more troubling, relational sociology denies that the sociologist should be interested in these “missing masses” at all. The goal of this chapter is to demonstrate that relational sociology must shed this residual reactionary humanism and embrace a concept of relation that extends beyond the arbitrary and artificial boundary of “the human” if it is to be at all useful for sociological analysis in the twenty-first century.